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Landrieu highlighting opposition to sanctions bill

U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu will visit a Citgo refinery in southwestern Louisiana on Thursday to highlight her success in stalling a bill to impose sanctions against human-rights abusers in Venezuela’s government.

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BATON ROUGE – U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu will visit a Citgo refinery in southwestern Louisiana on Thursday to highlight her success in stalling a bill to impose sanctions against human-rights abusers in Venezuela’s government.

While the Democratic senator has been criticized as siding with Venezuelan leaders who have committed horrific abuses, she says she’s protecting 2,000 Louisiana jobs at the refinery, which imports oil from the country.

She will tour the refinery in Sulphur, near Lake Charles, using the event to highlight her support for the oil and gas industry, a centerpiece of her re-election campaign. The Republican mayor of Sulphur will be with her as she meets with employees and managers of the facility.

In a tight race for a fourth term, Landrieu has twice stalled a Senate vote on the sanctions legislation by Florida GOP Sen. Marco Rubio and New Jersey Democrat Sen. Robert Menendez. She said the bill is written too broadly.

“While I support the goals of clamping down on human rights violations, I believe that it doesn’t have to be done at the expense of this strong economic engine. That’s why I stopped the resolution and will continue to oppose it unless the language of this resolution makes crystal clear that there will be no threat to the refinery,” Landrieu said in a recent newspaper column.

Her main Republican challenger, Rep. Bill Cassidy, supports the legislation and said Landrieu has sided with Venezuelan leaders who “are killing democracy.” He said Landrieu has repeatedly been reassured by Democrats and Republicans that the legislation would not harm workers in the United States or the Citgo refinery.

“Sen. Landrieu wants to claim this, and yet her own party says it is not true. The fact is that the United States has always stuck up for freedom, and we don’t think individuals should have the right to destroy democracy,” Cassidy said.

The Independent Venezuelan American Citizens group has held rallies at federal buildings in New Orleans and Baton Rouge to criticize Landrieu’s blocking of the bill.

Landrieu’s office says her position has support from the AFL-CIO workers’ union, and points to a letter from Citgo raising concerns about the sanctions.

The Democratic senator is one of the most vulnerable in the nation, targeted by Republicans in their effort to gain six Senate seats this fall and retake control of the chamber. She hopes to use the Citgo issue to showcase what she describes as her willingness to take on Washington to protect Louisiana jobs and the state’s energy industry.

The incumbent senator, who chairs the Senate energy committee, has spent her three terms in Washington defending the oil and gas industry. That record is a key plank of her re-election campaign.

The sanctions bills in Congress instruct President Barack Obama’s administration to compile a list of human-rights abusers in Venezuela’s government. Those blacklisted would be banned from entering the U.S., and assets they hold in American banks would be frozen. The House approved the package months ago.